OK, here is my problem with Google telling me how accurate the statements of politicians are:
Political donations given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt from 2003-2006 to Democratic party members and fund-raising organizations: $37,700. Political donations given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt from 2003-2006 to Republican party members and fund-raising organizations: $0 [ source ]
Political donations given by Google Empolyees from 2005-2006 to Democratic party members, fund-raising organizations, and PACs: $196,223 Political donations given by Google Empolyees from 2005-2006 to bipartisan PACs: $12,500 Political donations given by Google Empolyees from 2005-2006 to Republican party members, fund-raising organizations, and PACs: $4,000 [ source ]
Actually, I would say the discriminaton on display there comes from the HR rep. Unless she's had repeated prior experience with that particular set of people using the "for a girl" qualification, my gut reaction is that her own sexist predilictions are influencing her reactions to honest feedback given by folks who could care less what gender you are.
I've worked in groups with a number of female engineers, and that never seemed to create any professional boundaries for us technical folk. I don't have any trouble believing it's more of an issue in the forefront of the mind of someone in HR than of those in IT.
Probably because their money comes from the government. If they get $X to spend on "technology" for the year, and they don't spend it all, next year they get less. Since there are folks in every public institution whose sole job is to make sure they get as much money given to their institution as possible, they make sure they spend every cent of what they get--whether or not it's necessary. After all, the only real losers here are the taxpayers.
You know, my family was exactly the same way when I was growing up. But if Hollywood is judging the merit of a movie solely by its box-office take (as the article would seem to imply), maybe people like us are indirectly responsible for the "empty eye candy" nature of so many of today's cinema offerings.
Let's not forget that if you live in America, visiting another country almost invariably means flying. International flights can be quite expensive, especially for an entire family. Europeans often have the luxury of just hopping a train and making a day of it. There's no such thing here in the US. I would venture it's safe to to say it's an order of magnitude more expensive for an American to vacation abroad than for a European.
Even those of us in border states who could make the drive in less than a day are faced with the additional complications and expenses of driving their family (perhaps only) vehicle into a foreign country. Living in Texas, I've never had the experience of driving into Canada, but I can tell you the prospect of driving into Mexico is not terribly rosy. Not to mention that you could be looking at 12 or more hours of straight driving to get from central/north Texas to somewhere "culturally interesting" in Mexico (i.e., not on the border).
Oh yeah, and did I mention you don't even need a passport to go into Mexico? That may fiddle with your numbers a bit.
I've found I rarely buy video games at all anymore, aside from making sure I'm equipped for a multiplayer DS rumble. But I do still pay for games. WoW, like the article mentioned, gets my money directly.
But then there's GameFly. I tend to only play console games nowadays, because I can rent what I want, play them, and send them back for the next in line. As so many others have pointed out, so many new games these days are just incremental improvements over what came out the year before. In that light, there's not much incentive to keep the game, because if you get a hankering to play it, well, just grab the sequel or the knock-off and at least get some marginally different levels and eye candy out of it.
Back in the day, I used to pirate every game I played, console games included. The publishers got exactly $0 from me. Then I came to my senses, and started actually paying these folks for their time and effort. That got expensive, and I got burned a few times (though you do make a much more concerted effort to like and/or beat a game you paid real money for). Every couple of months, I would clean out the game rack and trade in the stuff I was never going to play again (which, let's be honest, was most of it) for credit to buy new games. This didn't make much sense, but if you weren't into this year's sports and racing lineup, you weren't going to find what you wanted at Blockbuster. If you did find an RPG, you had to power-play that sucker or it'd be cheaper to buy it.
Then along came GameFly, and much like NetFlix, they offer not only convenience and unlimited rental periods, but a library more extensive than your local Game Stop (especially if you want something that's been out a while). So now they get my money every month, and some of that money gets paid to the publishers. They don't make as much off of me as a sale, but it's certainly more than the $0 they got from me in my days as an IRC-faring scallawag.
But guess what? The PC publishers aren't getting their cut. I can't rent their games. If piracy's such a loss to them already, why not just rent your games out? If people want to just try out your game, it's a heck of a lot faster and easier to put it on your GameFly list than spend a week or two pulling it off BitTorrent. And you get paid for it.
Sure you'll get the same type of tools who rent everything Netflix has to offer and rips them to DVD-R, but like I said, you'll probably make out better in the long run. And I refuse to belive it's impossible to create some sort of solution to discourage that behavior. Nothing as odius as StarForce--after all, you don't need to make it impossible to copy (and it's not like StarForce does that anyway), just sufficently more difficult than renting. When the rental is essentially free through an online service, there's not nearly as much incentive to hack around.
That's what happens when politics are involved. The difference in Vegas is that there's only one entity in charge, they're spending their money, and they have a clear goal of seeing a return on that investment.
Besides, who really thought that the idea of a memorial for the victims of a terrorist attack that encouraged visitors to see the whole thing from the terrorists' points of view would really fly?
Well, I've always found the best games, those that leave the most lasting impacts on me, tend to be the ones whose merits are divorced from their underlying technology. Great characterization, engaging storyline, and vibrant worlds are going to feed the escapist hunger just as well whether they come from a book, television, video game, or GM.
Plus, the more interactivity, the more personal investement on the part of the viewer/reader/player. Video games (and pen-and-paper RPs) shine in this aspect.
That comment reminds me of an old Mad Magazine cartoon that featured a hippie talking about how he doesn't need all of your cars, your fossil fuels, your pollution, your nuclear energy, or any of that rot. All he needs is his guitar...and an outlet to plug it into.
So tell me where on that sheet of tickboxes next to the 2 or 3 options for each office that I only get access to on an annual or semi-annual basis I'm supposed to "make a difference?" After all, I've got no control over what either of these guys do once I tick their names off, and the only data I've got to extrapolate their future actions in most cases is the party they're affiliated with (which means less and less the more local you get).
This is the perfect example of an issue that will never come up in a debate, never be listed on an election-week "fact sheet," and never appear on a ballot outside of a legislative body. Which would be a bigger deal, except for this kind of issue, whichever party's candidate was picked they'd both probalby vote exactly the same way based on their constituency's prevalent lobby groups anyway.
What we need isn't more people showing up to vote on election day, picketing businesses, starting up political blogs, or holding hands chanting. What we need is less people trying to tell everybody else what to do in the first place. But you won't see that on the ballot this November.
I was one of those people who bought a PS2 simply because I wanted a DVD player. The availble titles for the first several months of the system's life were not what you would call "must-have" games. But I didn't have a DVD player, and I was pretty sure the PS2 would have something I wanted down the line, so I just decided to combine the two and grab one.
I have since sent the system into Sony for repairs no less than three times because it stopped playing DVDs. In fact, I know only one PS2 owner who has owned their system over a year and never had a problem playing DVDs. It's a valid conjecture, but I think anyone who had that mentality the last go-around has already learned their lesson.
The idea is that erotic imagery is every bit as powerful as savage imagery. While the depicted content varies greatly, the noticeable effect it has on the viewer, on both physiological and psychological levels, is just as strong (if not stronger, since the constant bombardment of a type of simulus has a de-sensitizing effect, and as you point out, violence is not as strictly regulated as pornography). If you think you're a totally disinterested party when you view anything, you're not being honest with yourself.
The key difference is that while violence is not socially acceptible under any normal circumstances, sex IS. This removes a very important barrier for emulating the behavior from impressionable minds (again, that's ALL of us, to some extent) who view the material. What you see in pornography is generally about as true to actual life experience as spectacularly exploding a car on the freeway using only a handgun, and then getting into a 10-minute fistfight with the driver who pulled himself from the wreckage.
I can see why parents wouldn't want their children learning by either of these examples, because it takes experience to separate fantasy from reality. The only difference is how likely their children are to actually go out and try to gain that experience using the examples they've seen. And again, not only is the general push of society going to wean you off of violence, but most people have an ingrained distaste for violence, whereas their bodies are actively promoting sex.
That said, the "violence is worse, so why are we talking about sex" argument is incredibly disingenuous, as shutting down the discussion of one problem doesn't fix the other. If the problem is too much crap, of one type or the other, inundating our entertainment, and finding its way to those we'd rather it didn't, harping on any progress is hampering it all.
I'm not saying these laws are a great idea, but let's try and stick to why they ACTUALLY suck.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, here is my problem with Google telling me how accurate the statements of politicians are:
Political donations given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt from 2003-2006 to Democratic party members and fund-raising organizations: $37,700.
Political donations given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt from 2003-2006 to Republican party members and fund-raising organizations: $0
[ source ]
Political donations given by Google Empolyees from 2005-2006 to Democratic party members, fund-raising organizations, and PACs: $196,223
Political donations given by Google Empolyees from 2005-2006 to bipartisan PACs: $12,500
Political donations given by Google Empolyees from 2005-2006 to Republican party members, fund-raising organizations, and PACs: $4,000
[ source ]
Actually, I would say the discriminaton on display there comes from the HR rep. Unless she's had repeated prior experience with that particular set of people using the "for a girl" qualification, my gut reaction is that her own sexist predilictions are influencing her reactions to honest feedback given by folks who could care less what gender you are. I've worked in groups with a number of female engineers, and that never seemed to create any professional boundaries for us technical folk. I don't have any trouble believing it's more of an issue in the forefront of the mind of someone in HR than of those in IT.
Probably because their money comes from the government. If they get $X to spend on "technology" for the year, and they don't spend it all, next year they get less. Since there are folks in every public institution whose sole job is to make sure they get as much money given to their institution as possible, they make sure they spend every cent of what they get--whether or not it's necessary. After all, the only real losers here are the taxpayers.
You know, my family was exactly the same way when I was growing up. But if Hollywood is judging the merit of a movie solely by its box-office take (as the article would seem to imply), maybe people like us are indirectly responsible for the "empty eye candy" nature of so many of today's cinema offerings.
Let's not forget that if you live in America, visiting another country almost invariably means flying. International flights can be quite expensive, especially for an entire family. Europeans often have the luxury of just hopping a train and making a day of it. There's no such thing here in the US. I would venture it's safe to to say it's an order of magnitude more expensive for an American to vacation abroad than for a European.
Even those of us in border states who could make the drive in less than a day are faced with the additional complications and expenses of driving their family (perhaps only) vehicle into a foreign country. Living in Texas, I've never had the experience of driving into Canada, but I can tell you the prospect of driving into Mexico is not terribly rosy. Not to mention that you could be looking at 12 or more hours of straight driving to get from central/north Texas to somewhere "culturally interesting" in Mexico (i.e., not on the border).
Oh yeah, and did I mention you don't even need a passport to go into Mexico? That may fiddle with your numbers a bit.
I've found I rarely buy video games at all anymore, aside from making sure I'm equipped for a multiplayer DS rumble. But I do still pay for games. WoW, like the article mentioned, gets my money directly.
But then there's GameFly. I tend to only play console games nowadays, because I can rent what I want, play them, and send them back for the next in line. As so many others have pointed out, so many new games these days are just incremental improvements over what came out the year before. In that light, there's not much incentive to keep the game, because if you get a hankering to play it, well, just grab the sequel or the knock-off and at least get some marginally different levels and eye candy out of it.
Back in the day, I used to pirate every game I played, console games included. The publishers got exactly $0 from me. Then I came to my senses, and started actually paying these folks for their time and effort. That got expensive, and I got burned a few times (though you do make a much more concerted effort to like and/or beat a game you paid real money for). Every couple of months, I would clean out the game rack and trade in the stuff I was never going to play again (which, let's be honest, was most of it) for credit to buy new games. This didn't make much sense, but if you weren't into this year's sports and racing lineup, you weren't going to find what you wanted at Blockbuster. If you did find an RPG, you had to power-play that sucker or it'd be cheaper to buy it.
Then along came GameFly, and much like NetFlix, they offer not only convenience and unlimited rental periods, but a library more extensive than your local Game Stop (especially if you want something that's been out a while). So now they get my money every month, and some of that money gets paid to the publishers. They don't make as much off of me as a sale, but it's certainly more than the $0 they got from me in my days as an IRC-faring scallawag.
But guess what? The PC publishers aren't getting their cut. I can't rent their games. If piracy's such a loss to them already, why not just rent your games out? If people want to just try out your game, it's a heck of a lot faster and easier to put it on your GameFly list than spend a week or two pulling it off BitTorrent. And you get paid for it.
Sure you'll get the same type of tools who rent everything Netflix has to offer and rips them to DVD-R, but like I said, you'll probably make out better in the long run. And I refuse to belive it's impossible to create some sort of solution to discourage that behavior. Nothing as odius as StarForce--after all, you don't need to make it impossible to copy (and it's not like StarForce does that anyway), just sufficently more difficult than renting. When the rental is essentially free through an online service, there's not nearly as much incentive to hack around.
You obviously failed out of bureaucracy school.
That's what happens when politics are involved. The difference in Vegas is that there's only one entity in charge, they're spending their money, and they have a clear goal of seeing a return on that investment.
Besides, who really thought that the idea of a memorial for the victims of a terrorist attack that encouraged visitors to see the whole thing from the terrorists' points of view would really fly?
Well, I've always found the best games, those that leave the most lasting impacts on me, tend to be the ones whose merits are divorced from their underlying technology. Great characterization, engaging storyline, and vibrant worlds are going to feed the escapist hunger just as well whether they come from a book, television, video game, or GM. Plus, the more interactivity, the more personal investement on the part of the viewer/reader/player. Video games (and pen-and-paper RPs) shine in this aspect.
That comment reminds me of an old Mad Magazine cartoon that featured a hippie talking about how he doesn't need all of your cars, your fossil fuels, your pollution, your nuclear energy, or any of that rot. All he needs is his guitar...and an outlet to plug it into.
Entrapment? Kind of. Except he had a very clear choice: shame or perjury. Only one of those is illegal. Ultimately, however, Clinton chose both.
And when the media become a body with electoral authority?
So tell me where on that sheet of tickboxes next to the 2 or 3 options for each office that I only get access to on an annual or semi-annual basis I'm supposed to "make a difference?" After all, I've got no control over what either of these guys do once I tick their names off, and the only data I've got to extrapolate their future actions in most cases is the party they're affiliated with (which means less and less the more local you get).
This is the perfect example of an issue that will never come up in a debate, never be listed on an election-week "fact sheet," and never appear on a ballot outside of a legislative body. Which would be a bigger deal, except for this kind of issue, whichever party's candidate was picked they'd both probalby vote exactly the same way based on their constituency's prevalent lobby groups anyway.
What we need isn't more people showing up to vote on election day, picketing businesses, starting up political blogs, or holding hands chanting. What we need is less people trying to tell everybody else what to do in the first place. But you won't see that on the ballot this November.
What's the difference?
I was one of those people who bought a PS2 simply because I wanted a DVD player. The availble titles for the first several months of the system's life were not what you would call "must-have" games. But I didn't have a DVD player, and I was pretty sure the PS2 would have something I wanted down the line, so I just decided to combine the two and grab one.
I have since sent the system into Sony for repairs no less than three times because it stopped playing DVDs. In fact, I know only one PS2 owner who has owned their system over a year and never had a problem playing DVDs. It's a valid conjecture, but I think anyone who had that mentality the last go-around has already learned their lesson.
I think most people are centrists. They just don't get as much air-time as the loonies.
The idea is that erotic imagery is every bit as powerful as savage imagery. While the depicted content varies greatly, the noticeable effect it has on the viewer, on both physiological and psychological levels, is just as strong (if not stronger, since the constant bombardment of a type of simulus has a de-sensitizing effect, and as you point out, violence is not as strictly regulated as pornography). If you think you're a totally disinterested party when you view anything, you're not being honest with yourself.
The key difference is that while violence is not socially acceptible under any normal circumstances, sex IS. This removes a very important barrier for emulating the behavior from impressionable minds (again, that's ALL of us, to some extent) who view the material. What you see in pornography is generally about as true to actual life experience as spectacularly exploding a car on the freeway using only a handgun, and then getting into a 10-minute fistfight with the driver who pulled himself from the wreckage.
I can see why parents wouldn't want their children learning by either of these examples, because it takes experience to separate fantasy from reality. The only difference is how likely their children are to actually go out and try to gain that experience using the examples they've seen. And again, not only is the general push of society going to wean you off of violence, but most people have an ingrained distaste for violence, whereas their bodies are actively promoting sex.
That said, the "violence is worse, so why are we talking about sex" argument is incredibly disingenuous, as shutting down the discussion of one problem doesn't fix the other. If the problem is too much crap, of one type or the other, inundating our entertainment, and finding its way to those we'd rather it didn't, harping on any progress is hampering it all.
I'm not saying these laws are a great idea, but let's try and stick to why they ACTUALLY suck.